Friday, August 17, 2012

On the unpower of words

In the East poets are sometimes thrown in prison – a sort of compliment, since it suggests the author has done something at least as real as theft or rape or revolution. Here poets are allowed to publish anything at all – a sort of punishment in effect, prison without walls, without echoes, without palpable existence – shadow-realm of print, or of abstract thought-world without risk or eros. ... America has freedom of speech because all words are considered equally vapid.

"And of course this re-emphasizes the original point -- the USSR cared enough about poets to murder and suppress them, in the US it is quite enough to ignore them."

The intelligentsia (a word of Russian origin) have always felt underappreciated in the U.S., and their sense of grievance at what they believe to be their unrewarded merit is one reason why so many of them have sympathized (and continue to sympathize) with Marxism, a political and economic system devised by a fellow intellectual. Marxism appeals to the amour-propre of the intelligentsia, as well as to their envy of the rich and powerful, whom they regard as mediocre hacks in comparison to themselves.

Being taken seriously by the powers-that-be cuts both ways. In the Soviet Union, it could lead either to the Politburo or to the gulag - if not to both in sequence. If intellectuals were as wise as they are learned, they might see that the benefits of being ignored more often than not outweigh its disadvantages.